Joey Pinz Discipline Conversations

#844 Rion Westfall: 🚀 Revenue Patterns: The Hidden Key to Business Growth

• Joey Pinz • Episode 844

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What separates businesses that struggle from those that scale successfully? 🤔

In this episode of Joey Pinz Conversations, Joey Pinz sits down with entrepreneur and growth strategist Rion Westfall to explore the powerful concept of revenue patterns — the hidden signals inside businesses that reveal how companies truly grow.

Rion shares insights from building multiple companies and working across 15 countries, explaining why most businesses unknowingly scale chaos instead of profits. Through real stories, including how he once tripled the size of a company in under two years, Rion reveals why clarity, leadership mindset, and operational awareness matter more than most founders realize.

The conversation dives into the psychology of business growth, leadership vs. management, and why entrepreneurs must shift from working in the business to leading it strategically.

Along the way, Joey and Rion also discuss mindset, personal habits, coaching, and the importance of asking better questions to unlock real progress.

If you're an entrepreneur, founder, or business leader trying to scale smarter — this conversation offers practical insights you can apply immediately.

 

⭐ Top 3 Highlights

🔥 Revenue Patterns Explained

Why identifying repeatable growth signals can transform business results.

🧠 Mindset Over Strategy

Why psychology and leadership thinking matter more than most business plans.

📈 From Chaos to Clarity

How entrepreneurs can stop scaling problems and start scaling profit.

 

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SPEAKER_00

Ryan Westfall. Fascinating perspective. Ryan. He helps businesses find revenue patterns, talks to leadership. I wonder when you hear the term revenue pattern, what you think of. When revenue is flowing into the business, are there certain patterns that show up? Can they be traceable? Can they be repeated? Can they be documented? Fascinating perspective. He's done, he's worked many, many businesses, close to 10, uh himself, and now he helps others. But just fascinating perspective. I start the conversation with radiol deviation. Do you know what that is? Fascinating backstory of that. Really enjoyed my time. Ryan, thank you so much. And thank you for watching and listening. Hi, I'm Joey Pins. And here's my 45-second introduction. After starting my business in the 90s, I started developing poor habits of eating in my diet because of working way too much. Before you know it, I found myself 340 pounds. The doctor told me if I don't lose the weight, I'm not gonna see my daughter graduate. Took the next seven months, lost 130 pounds. People think there's some secret. Ask me, how'd you lose that weight? Like there's some secret. There is no secret. How'd I lose the weight? Just one word. Discipline. I've had other successes in life, and I attribute them all to discipline. Now I'm not the king of discipline, but I believe that it can help all of us. Friends, colleagues convinced me to start a podcast. The podcast mission, how do we better ourselves and society? I talked to interesting people in health, fitness, sport, wellness, business, technology, science, art and culture. And I eventually asked them how discipline plays a role in their life. Podcast Vision, growth through learning from others.

SPEAKER_03

And it was in reference to your leading forearm. As you're a batter, as you're a hitter, your leading forearm, it's basically taking that wrist and turning that thumb up toward, you know, as if you're trying to pull the thumb back toward your shoulder. And what it does, you can pretend if you had the bat in your hand and you and you you cock that wrist, you know, you cock that rix back to you. Basically, what it's doing is it's creating a velocity head as you come through to hit and you're you're taking that incline, that radial deviation, and you're snapping it. The bat itself is going to create a lot more bat speed in the in the head of the bat. And that that that's what radial deviation is.

SPEAKER_00

In this fast-paced MSP landscape, how do you stay ahead? Introducing MSP Influencer.com, your ultimate hub for MSP news, insights, and community connection powered by Forza Dash. More than 75,000 MSP subscribed to our MSP Influencer Pulse weekly newsletter, staying informed and ahead of industry trends. Tune in to Emerging Podcast with Joey Penn and leading MSP voices, offering essential tips, powerful insights, and success stories. Explore our multi-authored lives crafted specifically for MSP leaders, delivering fresh perspectives and actionable strategies. Celebrate excellence with the industry leading Forza Dash MSP Influencer Awards, recognizing innovation, leadership, and impact in the MSP community. Join thousands of MSP professionals who trust MSP Influencer.com to grow their business and expand their networks. MSP Influencer.com, where today's MSP leaders connect, collaborate, and conquer, all powered by the ForzaDosh platform, helping MSP vendors work effectively with MSPs and helping MSPs grow. I understood that worked for golf too.

SPEAKER_03

It would work for golf. Um uh not being an avid golfer, but trying it in golf, it doesn't work as well because it just for me, it just kind of whacked up the swing, you know, that kind of stuff. But I I'm sure that uh for more technical people in the golf world, that there's probably some truth to that.

SPEAKER_00

But Ryan, the lesson learned here is that you you played baseball uh your whole life and you rose through the ranks, and it wasn't until you got to the LA Dodgers system that a coach finally said this to you.

SPEAKER_03

Yep, correct.

SPEAKER_00

So the lesson is we can get so far with what we have, but at what at a particular point to go to the next level, you do need to be coached.

SPEAKER_03

You've got to be coached if you want to become something more than what you can see in front of you.

SPEAKER_00

You know, um I ran a small business still do for a long time, and the three things that I I learned, and I can't wait for your feedback. Number one was to join a peer group, you know, have somebody hold you accountable. It's so tough as the owner, you know, you're on an island by yourself, join a peer group. Two is there's plenty of entrepreneurial business systems right out there. There's many of them. Just get one and adopt it. And last is hire a coach. Thoughts?

SPEAKER_03

I think you know, I'm working with a guy right now. He just uh he just submitted, he's going through a very difficult point in his life because he just submitted his retirement from the NFL. So he's played five years. And people like that. I mean, I I know the the drive as far as the athletics behind us, like it just I mean, it's what moves us. I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs and people are ex-athletes because they just have that, right? And he he submitted that. And to his point, he's like, I'm going through withdrawals. I I've never known anything. You know, he's 27 years old or whatever it is. His whole family that, you know, they've lived that whole life. He's Samoan, you know, big, strong, you know, all that kind of stuff. And and he says, I've never had to play this game in my head. I I've I've never I've never had to, you know, it was always just on to the next season and train for this and keep eating, keep growing faster, stronger, better, that kind of stuff. But he says, I've never, I don't know this game. He says, now that I'm done with this, and what what's next and where's the paycheck going to come from? And yeah, he's got this idea to have this business, but he's like, I'm a fish out of water. I mean, just being open. And so as we're sitting here talking and going through stuff, well, do this first, do this second, do this third, do this fourth. I've only done it nine times. By the way, I've seen other people do this, you know. So just being able to go through just a couple months and working with him, helping him realize hey, you just probably saved yourself three years. Wow. You know, and so to your point, one of the first things I would say people should do is look for that coach. Look for that mentor. I mean, you they they go by a number of terms, right? Coach, mentor, whatever it is. Uh, whether it's, you know, if you're really serious about your growth, um, find one that you are blessed to pay for. You know, there's always going to be quote unquote, the old guy that you can bounce a couple of thoughts off and they can give you their two cents. I mean, there's always going to be people semi around you in that circle. But the moment when you're saying, hey, I'm going to take my coat, my, my, my coach words serious, uh pay for one, right? I mean, I mean, that's what professional athletes do. And I use that analogy with him. I said, Look, you're on a football team, you don't have one coach, you've got like, you know, a whole coaching staff. And all these people are helping you. So, of course, yeah, keep that going in your life. Don't stop it just because you're no longer a professional athlete. You're a professional businessman, i.e., an entrepreneur. You still need coaching. And you're going to need different coaches in different stages of your life. And that's just, you know, something I like you. Hey, I still use them. I still got coaches I refer to and different people I buy from and do things at uh different periods of my life.

SPEAKER_00

We must be humble enough, Ryan, to accept when you, I mean, Tiger Woods had a coach, for goodness sakes, right? Um everybody needs, you know, to have that outside perspective. I read somewhere, and correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, where at one particular point you were handed four leads, and then they said, good luck, you're not going to survive.

SPEAKER_03

That is that is absolutely correct. That's a great story. I I love telling it because um in the world that I was in, the EPCM at that point, engineering, procurement, construction management, right, as as its industry had a huge wave. It's kind of like the trades right now, how we have a shortage of tradespeople, that industry very similarly. So it helped me because heck, in my 20s, I'm I'm on this, you know, increased road of going forward. And and you couple the engineering with the business background and the fact that I speak two languages, it just made it that more steep. And this was a situation where literally, yes, it was a 30-year-old company, the uh VP of business development, he was retiring after 10 years of being in the business. And uh they were looking for someone else. I was working for someone else at the time when I had met them, the owners, that is, and had a conversation with them. And then literally the month after that conversation, relationship changed with my my current employer. So I came back to them. I said, hey, you know, I'd be interested. And so I came on board as as he was leaving. And I mean, I was late 20s, and you know, I two children, my third was about to be born. And here I was going to be responsible for, you know, a 30-year-old company that's got at that time they had about 20, 25 employees, but they'd been in business for a long time, had a very special niche, and I'm responsible for all their livelihoods, right? I mean, that's that's that's not lightweight. And uh yeah, that that was the situation where the that VP, he came in and he you could tell he wanted to get out there uh as fast as he could, and that's exactly what he did. He he took a pe he took a pencil on a piece of paper right in front of me, wrote four names on a piece of paper, handed it to me, and said, Well, this is what I got. And uh that's he did. He he walked out the door and he says, Good luck, you're not going to survive. His his confidence in that business continuing beyond him leaving was virtually non existent. And so, you know, for me, that uh one was a shock because I'm thinking, hey, you've been around 30 business, you should have at least kind of a a book a book of uh where you're going to from here. And when that none of that exists, I realized, heck, I'm on my own. This is you know, sink or swim, do or die. And uh so it it really uh I look back on it and it was a catalyst for me to do things, to do the things that I did, which ultimately, and then in the following two years, we tripled the size of the country.

SPEAKER_00

We tripled it, yeah, in two under two years. So what did you see that others missed?

SPEAKER_03

I just uh one being an outsider. So that was the that was, I guess, the beauty of it is one, I didn't know any better. So, you know, I just had to ask them questions. Hey, what about this? And what about this? And what about this? Well, I I see it this way and I see it this way. Well, we're missing this, we're missing that. The first thing I did is I went back through the last about eight years of proposals, and I went through every single one of them. And at that time, you know, this is before AI, right? So I went through the the hand proposals and put them all in a spreadsheet. And okay, this proposal one, two, three, went through all of them. Who were they to? What were the country? Uh, was it a language? Was it a translation job? What kind of it was working a lot in the industrial uh sector and mining and things like that. What kind of material was it? You know, all the all the data points I could gather about it. Uh, what was the size of the project? Was I uh were they dealing with a uh what they call a local patriot, meaning someone from the US is down there working, or are they dealing with a with a national, you know, someone who's you know in that country of origin? Uh and what were the factors that did we ultimately did we win or lose the project? And so that was the first place I started and I went through all the wins, you know. I didn't care about the losers. I went through all the wins and I started outlining these are the common patterns, these data points. And so from that, I said, look, you guys don't win projects that are sub $500,000, hardly ever. So I'm not going to chase them. In fact, if I get something like that, I'm not even going to respond. And and I did. I I completely said, I am not being distracted by those because the probability of win and the effort and all this stuff that goes into it, it's just not worth it. And so little things like that, I started making changes. And I remember one time we were um uh it was a it was a project up in Canada, and uh we were on a on a phone call. This was the very first phone call with him. And the owner's sitting right next to me, he's been the owner for 30 plus years, right? Ever since it started. And the the the other company, he's on the line, and he just says, okay, he gives a short description of everything like that. And he says, Any idea what the cost is going to be? And I know the owner, he normally says, Yeah, well, we'll take it and give us the flow sheets and we'll look at this and we'll get back to you like that. I just responded him. I said, Yeah, you're looking anywhere from about uh 1.5 to 1.8 million. And the owner, he said right next to me, he about falls off his chair. And and and he's like, you know, I I could tell he, you know, we're on speakerphone, so he doesn't want to say anything. But afterwards he says, Why did you tell him that that's what it would cost? And I said, Isn't that what it's going to cost? Yeah, probably. Okay. So why didn't why not, why not tell him, you know, like if we're not comfortable with what we know things are, I mean, we're the expert here.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_03

So if someone's calling to getting a range, if if you know, I'd rather find out right now whether or not 1.5 and 1.8, if that's a range, is that going to be an issue or not?

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_03

Um, because if it's going to be an issue, then we probably don't need to be talking. And so, you know, it's just little things like that. The you know, finding the patterns, the things that work, the things that don't. And and so that that's part of what really helped us uh uh catapult during those uh couple of years.

SPEAKER_00

You talk a lot, Ryan, about hunting for revenue patterns. Like what exactly is a revenue pattern?

SPEAKER_03

A revenue pattern, well, revenue is the bloodstream for any business. And just like our body, uh, is it healthy blood? Is it non-healthy blood? Do you have do you have a cut or a scrape where you're losing blood? Um, what are you doing to improve that? So in business, um, as part of that role, I traveled, uh, worked in 15 different countries. And as I traveled those countries, part of my responsibility as you know, over business business development was to come in and do these audits, do these evaluations on these operations. So you do that for a decade plus, you you learn a few things, right? And regardless of the country, regardless of the language, regardless of how skilled or unskilled the workforce was, there was always patterns that would reveal themselves as to why they are either struggling, either from a in business, we have two main things. We have top line and bottom line revenue, right? Top line almost all that's always dealing with the sales. What do we bring in in? How much there's a revenue coming in. The bottom line has everything to do with operational efficiencies, right? And so most of the time people think of revenue, they're always our mind naturally gravitates to uh top line. Hey, bring this in, bring this in, bring this in. Okay, but yeah, what happens if we don't change that at all? But we take your 4% margin from last year and make it 8% this year. What does that do to you? Um, well, that would allow us to, and so we we start moving from there. So when we talk about finding revenue patterns, it's literally across the entire gamut of the company. It's from it's from the top line aspect. Yes, we look at that, we look for the patterns where that's improving, uh, those types of things. I've got a got you know several processes that I use to identify and pull these things out. Actually, here two months ago, we just launched our um app, our dashboard online app. And and it's you know, it's awesome. We've got our first nine companies in there. Uh, we've identified 158 patterns within those first nine companies to the tune of about 65 million dollars. And so as we go through and as we hunt these patterns, one, it's just helping us maintain clear visibility. Like you said, as a coach, right, or Tiger Woods, he can't see his swing. Right, none of us can. I couldn't see my swing, and that's why the guy just popped up and he's looking at it and looking, hey, radial deviation, what the heck is that? I have no idea. And so when we can listen to the coaches and we can say, hmm, well, that's interesting. Let me tweak that, let me change that. All of a sudden, just that small tweak and the bat head speed was coming off. So every time I did make contact, the ball was traveling harder wherever it went. Is that that's a that's a wonderful thing in the sport of baseball, right? And so uh the same thing goes in our business lives. If we can find those little tweaks, those little patterns, having somebody look at it, and that's why I designed it, is so that we can step back and we as a collective, meaning the leadership of the company, we can step back and look at the company. We can see how it is, go through these different tests, if you will, and find the patterns that are affecting either top line and or bottom line revenue to that aspect. And then it just from there, once you've identified, once you've been able to quantify and and and do those things, it makes it so much easier now to actually have a result in it and a timely result. You've run businesses, you know as well as I do, uh time is critical. You know, if we if we just roll over and roll over and roll over in the same chaos that we did last year, uh it's just a grind and it's usually not fun. And so, you know, we we we start our businesses to have fun, not not just to be at a grind. But uh, but anyways, give me an example of a revenue pattern. One of the first patterns that I deal with is clarity around what problem you solve. Most of the time, whenever we're in conversations with people, uh the the question is known as, hey, what do you do? Right? I mean that that that that's a typical conversation. Someone you meet, somebody, hey, what do you do? But really what you're asking or what you're being asked is what problem do you solve that nobody else does? If I'm gonna engage in conversation with you, what problem are you gonna help me solve? If if I can't get that clear in my head, then you're just another name in the library of names. Right. And my experience is when I ask that question, I mean, this is tested many times over, when I ask that question, usually, when I say usually, I'd probably say 85-90% of the time, I will get a laundry list bullet points. Hey, we do this and we do this and we do this and we do this, and this is how we do it. And I'll I'll get kind of the system approach as to what they do, but I still then have to interpret the problem that they solve. And so clarity first and foremost around the problem that is solved, that is that is the first pattern because that there's a domino effect that goes to all the employees and to all the future clients. When everybody's speaking the same language, when everybody's enveloped in, hey, this is the problem we solve, and you stay focused on that problem. Of course, yeah, we might solve other problems along the way, but this is our focus. When that is identified, when it's spoken, when it's actually written down, there's power in that. You know, clarity is power all the time. And uh, if it's not written down, it's a liability. If it is written down, it's an asset. So give yourself the strongest asset you and your company can have by being very, very clear as to what problem you solve that no one else does. And so that that's usually where I start. That's one example of a pattern. There, there's so many patterns in sales and operations and maintenance and you know, reviews at the end of a project or end of, you know, you're making sure that those people are actually coming around and either buying again or helping you convert other future clients. There's so many different patterns that are found throughout the uh throughout the cycle of a of a business.

SPEAKER_00

So when clients can't give you a quick kind of elevator pitch, I mean, isn't that an issue with mission and vision and core values? Does that need to be reviewed? Did they start without those or did those just get blurred? What generally happens there if they can't tell you tell you what problem they solve quickly?

SPEAKER_03

Is it an issue with mission and vision? I would say I would say that the answer to that question encapsulates your mission and your vision. Exactly. Right? And so And we we can ask those questions in multiple ways. And I and I have in the past, I've narrowed it down to that specific question, right? What problem do you solve that no one else does? And that is uh our minds are triggered by better questions. So when when we can ask better, more thoughtful questions, I've asked that question and then therefore spent two hours with people on multiple occasions just trying to answer that question.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_03

Right? I mean, like literally, I have sat down on Zoom calls and I have a mirror board, which is like a digital whiteboard, and we just top, you know, people start talking and I just start typing and typing and typing. Next you know, we've got this laundry list of things that they do, but still no clarity around the answer to that problem. And you know, and you know as well as I do, all the studies will show in the psych uh you know, psyche vows of people and things like that, that if we don't hit a chord within that first seven, 10, 15 seconds, usually, you know, the odds of anything transpiring just fade out. And so you want to be very, very clear with that to where people do, hey, tell me more.

SPEAKER_00

So of those companies, Ryan, that grow really fast, what are some common patterns that you see?

SPEAKER_03

Patterns around companies that grow fast. One of the revolves around the individuals that are hired, right? When when you're growing fast, usually it's not a top line issue. It's going to turn into that bottom line issue where you're working on the efficiencies in between. Hey, can we keep up with this? Can we keep up with that? Can we get the production? Can we maintain quality? Most all of that will revolve around the people that you hire. Right? So if you have an issue in hiring people, then you're also going to have an issue usually in your quality, in your production, and and things that that follow off of that. Uh, there's there's kind of six points that I use in a customer roadmap, right? As we look at it, we want to make sure as a business that we are focusing on the customer themselves. What's their journey? What does their road look like? And you've been on roads uh when you travel with the the family or whatever, and you're driving and you plug in that GPS location and the map comes up, and then all of a sudden you see, holy cow, there's this big red section. What do you end up doing? Like, hey, where's the detour? Where can I go around this, right? I don't want to go through the construction or the or the car wreck. So, very similarly, if we look at our businesses, and there's six questions that I ask, and that I have all of my businesses' answers as we're mapping this out. Not thinking in terms of individual customers, but customers in general. First, one, how does the customer find and initially interact with you? Right? You have to be able to understand that. You might use websites, you might be 100% referral-based, you might use cold outreaches, you might use ads, whatever it is, there's a point at which the customer initially finds and interacts with you. How does that look? Second, how did they decide to hire? Now that you've had that initial interaction, that initial find, how is it that they decide to hire? Third, from that, now that they've decided to hire, what does it look like for them to become a customer? So many times when we're working in industries that are heavy regulated, uh, right? You might be, uh I've worked in Department of Defense, I've worked in, you know, construction management, I've worked in these big projects that take years to evolve. There's insurance requirements and this and that, right? The becoming a customer part, that's a long step. You know, if if I'm buying the book on Amazon, it's I put in my name, I put in my credit card, hit build done. I'm, you know, I'm done in a minute. But in most businesses, hey, we want more information. We've got insurance, we've got regulations, there's a lot of stuff. How do we become a customer? Do they come in? Do we create a portal? I work with financial advisors, and one guy he turned and he handed me these folders. I'm like, do you have that automated or anything? He says no. I says, Well, there's an issue, right? How are we becoming a customer? This is tedious. It's time. Like there, there's an example of a pattern if you're still doing all of this stuff manually. Um so becoming a customer, getting involved so that all of the uh accounts, you know, APAR, everything, all of that stuff is set up and and done efficiently. You know, you you've been you to buy a car. When you go to buy a car, I I I know the last one. I've I've bought enough cars with my companies. I went to the last one. I just told the guy, I said, I have 20 minutes. I said, here's my offer. It's for that truck. I said, can you do this? And that's it. I just told him, you know, because I I've I've been on the other end where I've walked in there and all of a sudden, three hours later, I'm still there to do the same paperwork. It's like you don't want to do that. So that third one, how does the customer become your customer? Fourth, how does it get fulfilled? Whatever it is that they've purchased from you, whether it's a service, whether it's a product, whether it's a construction, something that takes a year or something that takes a day, how does it get fulfilled? Fifth one, how does it get delivered? There's a delivery aspect to this, right? How how are we delivering it? You've seen people that have skyrocketed their business simply by packaging the product differently on how they give it, right? And then, of course, the sixth one is how do they return for how do they return to you and also help other clients come, you know, come to you? That whole referral aspect, their testimonial, getting it. I've seen so many companies that no, we don't really have a way of capturing their testimonial. Why not? Were they a happy client? Yeah, they were, they told me so. Okay, how is he or she going to help you get more people? You know, rev reviews are huge. When you when you go out for to eat and you want to go to a new place, you're in a new city, what do you look at? Uh how many stars do they got? Right? I I mean, reviews are critical. So, very similarly, going through those six different and you know, those six different questions and mapping out how you're doing, and then that what that does is hey, that allows us to go back and grade, right? We can go back and now start grading, we can go start analyzing. So I'm a firm believer that, hey, first we got to discover, like you said, hey, let's you know, be humble enough to know that there's issues and no business is perfect. So, but first I'm just gonna go through and I'm gonna discover how does the business work? How does it operate? How does it flow? Does it not flow? Does it you're gonna find holes, you're gonna find voids. That's what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to see that so that we can see where are those patterns, either good or bad, where are those patterns that are affecting our revenue?

SPEAKER_00

It's a wonderful process you have, Brian. I what do you do? So I'm in the tech field and I end up working with a lot of these smaller companies. And what I often find, and this is just a generalization, that you know, it's a it's a genius engineer that started the company because they're really good at what they do, they're really good at delivering the solution, they're not good at necessarily sales, marketing, accounting, finance. So, what do you do with you know an owner that is getting in its own way of growing?

SPEAKER_03

What do I do with an owner that's getting in his own way of growing? So, as mentioned, my my business is working with I I love entrepreneurships and businesses often can't tell what levers are going to get them a 2x, a 3x, a 5x growth with the proper margins. And so they end up scaling more chaos than they do profit. And so we hunt, we tactically hunt those patterns that will pull the right levers so that they can add that seven, eight-figure growth in the next six to 12 months with the proper margins. That's what I do. So those engineers, and I've got one right now, he's he's got a $40 million business and he he's owned it for 20 years, and he's like, I just can't seem to get more than this. Like, like, like it just feels like he's kind of hit a glass ceiling because he's been there for a number of years. He just can't seem to get more than that. And we start diving through and we start seeing through. And um one of the exercises, because uh you can't help a business without helping the people, right? Individually. So personally, individually, I get to know these people, I get to speak with them about their personal habits and their personal lives and things like that. And one of those things is always, almost always, the disciplined use of time. Right? Are you being disciplined or are you being distracted?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And in this case, this owner, he was uh regularly. I mean, you know, he's got kids, he's got a wife, he's got kids. He's regularly working. We went through this exercise, he's regularly working about 73 to 74 hours every week. Wow. And and and he's just doing it. And and that's what he that's what he does. And he's okay with that because it's a 24-7 type operation, and so things are always happening seven days a week, that kind of stuff. And and I get it, you know, when it's not a standard office nine to five kind of deal, um, you're going to find yourself putting out fires and doing things. And so uh going back to my previous phrase, if it's not written down, it's a liability. If it is written down, it's an asset. Well, let's write it down. So we started writing it down. And then afterwards, I I do this this exercise. I mean, anyone can do it, but I specifically do it because owners need to see themselves. And we always see within our head, but it's the coach that's going to the the coach is the giant mirror, right? That coach is going to show you, hey, look at this, right? Here's the video, watch the replay, see where you're messing up here, see, see where that's what the coach is. And in this case, I am reflecting to them their lack of discipline in the own management of their time. And so we we start going through this, and one of the exercises I do as part of this, I ask them, what do you charge out? If if I were to hire you, I want to hire you for two hours tomorrow afternoon. What would I pay you to hire you for those two hours? And usually they give me a rate. Hey, it's 300 bucks an hour, it's 400 bucks an hour, it's 500 bucks an hour. Okay, great. CEO of a 5 million 40 million dollar company, okay, sounds good. I probably charge more. Who knows? But great. Thank you for the number. And now I start going through all those 73 hours. I said, okay, you're doing this task. If you were to hire someone, theoretically, you were to hire someone to do that task, what would it cost to do that task? Oh, $25 an hour. Oh, $55 an hour, oh, $100 an hour. Okay, great. And then we just go through, we add them all up, and sure enough, average it out. I said, Oh, you tell me you bill out at $400 an hour, but according to this, you're working for $122 an hour. And you you can almost see, remember the old style cartoons when someone would get sick and they would make the the flush color, they'd make them green like they want to puke. You can almost see that in the owners, like you said. If I've got this engineer, whatever it is, you can almost see that kind of vomit puke. Ugh that I don't like that. Okay, great. Wonderful. Let's we're we're identifying a painful pattern. We are losing money, we are losing opportunities. And then as we start going through it, we say, what of these activities do you actually like doing? What do you see yourself doing? And so sure enough, with him, 73 hours, we did it, we did a little bit of a vision exercise. What do you see yourself doing? Well, I see myself working for, and then he outlined about 50 hours a week. Okay, great. And then we went through and we did some more things. I said, one of the things you did not mention is, and I put this line item, CEO vision. There's only one person in the company that can do that, and you're the only one. What is the value of that? I put $1,000 plus per hour. Because you're the only one that can do that. No one else can. And so as we started looking at that, and and this really every time I do this exercise, it really has this aha power to where the owner starts realizing I'm doing zero hours of that. And if it's at a thousand dollars plus, I want my rate to be enhanced. Am I actually leading this company or am I just playing ball with them while we're doing it? I'm not I'm not really leading this. And so if I can put my time towards something that's more, oh, profitable, towards the things that I need to do. Oh, and at this time, hey, not to mention the 21 hours, 23 hours, whatever it was that we now actually claw back each week. You get a spend with your wife, you get a spend with your kids. Like what does that start doing for you? And so when people, we're we're we're all we're all the same. When we see the value, we call it revenue. And my process, yes, I call it own your revenue, but it's own your mindset, it's own your time, it's own your resources, it's own your, you know, you can go on and on and on, right? Having control over these things, being disciplined and not distracted so that you're not losing those things. So, really, the whole process is designed to find those patterns, be it personal, be it business, because uh some are the same, right? So the one they all affect each other. So we're we're hunting those patterns that are going to have a likely effect of need for change.

SPEAKER_00

What if discipline wasn't about punishment, but about unlocking your best self? I spent two and a half years writing discipline for greatness, because discipline changed my life. And I know it can change yours too. This isn't a theory. Inside, you'll find real practical steps you can use immediately to focus better, build stronger habits, reduce stress, accomplish your goals, and bring more balance to your life. Whether you're trying to get healthier, improve your career, or simply feel more control. This book gives you the framework. Start today. Grab your copy of Discipline for Greatness at joeypins.com slash book. Thank you. Delegation is a very, very, uh, it's a skill that's got to be mastered because I I run into you know many of the small businesses similar to yours that just, you know, the owner still insists on ordering the pizza or you know, ordering the paper towels. You know, it's uh you know, it's just it's very tough to kind of let the baby go a little bit. I want to talk about the mindset of an entrepreneur owner versus kind of the corporate life. I heard you talk about how when you were starting, when you had one of your businesses and your wife was working with you, she comes from a very different background, kind of educational, where there, you know, paycheck is guaranteed and that wasn't the case there, and you had to kind of reframe a little bit. Talk about that, please.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, mindset are first of all. I mean, I I I'm I'm a I'm I'm a believer. I have four kids myself. Um, and the strongest points in my life have always been side by side with my wife, right? And and some of the hardest points have been there too, but my strongest points have been with her, not against her. So people who are married have access to unique powers and abilities simply by virtue of being married. And so as we tap into those viewpoints, um and and and I I'm still learning. I mean, I've been 20 20 years married now. We're actually two days from now. So on Thursday, Thursday, so March 11th is what we're doing. Absolutely, and um, and uh as as I've worked to focus to to to get more on board with her, uh one of the things about not losing my temper, frankly. I mean, that's that's what we typically do, is I I found many entrepreneurs, we are very short with our friends and family, right? Just because we're we're naturally geared to be going at a different speed than everybody else. So being able to slow down and being able to take in their different point of views, uh absolutely uh critical uh in order to just have that advantage. I mean, it's kind of like a home court advantage, right? When you can have a home court advantage and have a partner that you can actually talk with, you may not like what they say, but they they see things that that maybe you're just overlooking. And I've often found that when, like you said at the beginning, when I humble myself and allow myself to say, all right, honey, yeah, yeah, you you're right. Or hey, usually right is somewhere in the middle between what I'm thinking and what she's thinking, right? And but but as I as I focus to do that, um it's it it's absolutely critical. You're you're talking about mindset, and I think I got off on a tangent with uh spouse, but going back to the original question about mindset, right? Mindset is something that I feel is felt by others more than anything. When you're in a certain mind, when you're whether it's pensive, uh, if you're in a stressful mind, if you're in a worried mindset, what whatever your mindset is, your mindset mood, people are going to they're just gonna they're gonna amplify it, right? People are amplifiers. Um and if we do it enough, and our mindset is kind of on the negative aspect, then any of the good amplifiers usually we're gonna probably chase away. Right? So people and our mindsets were kind of like magnets. I like to use magnets as as a general. When we were playing with two magnets, if you remember playing with kids, hey, you put two magnets together and then all of a sudden they just snap together. Right? But if you flip one of those magnets over and you try try and push them together, they they want to resist, they want to go the other way. So very similarly, that that's what people are like. You know, we have this polarity, and either we're attracted or we repel each other. But similarly, the stronger the magnetic force that attracts us, if you flip that over, also that's the stronger the force of the repel. So as leaders, as owners, as entrepreneurs, having our mindset in its right place is going to do one of two. Well, whatever your mindset is, it's going to have one of two consequences. One, it's going to To attract whatever is like you, it's going to attract whatever is like you, it's going to repel anything that is not like you. So if you want your business, for example, to be, I use developing a culture of revenue first mindset in the business. If I want my people to have a culture of a revenue-first mindset, as opposed to, hey, yeah, I'm just clocking in, get my eight hours done so I can get my paycheck and go home. Those are two different types of businesses. They both might be solving the same problem, but they're two completely different types of businesses. And so for us as entrepreneurs, how we want our people to be, I mean, that it is ever so critical that we are waking up and even training. And I go through several training exercises and people things where I'm training my mindset to act a certain way all the time.

SPEAKER_00

So is business success more about strategy or psychology or mindset?

SPEAKER_03

I would answer that it is more about your mindset. The strategy will come, and you can have strategy without mindset. You really can. I mean, you can come up with it, you can bounce some ideas off of other people and throw some uh strat strategic moves out there that are going to, hey, this is our business and we're going to do A, B, C, D. But ultimately, let's take the MA world, right? Uh, mergers and acquisitions. Our business is an asset. And we like to think it's an asset. Usually, owners erroneously think it's an asset bigger than what it actually is, what someone else is willing to pay for. Because eventually, eventually you're going to want out of your business. Whether it's because you ran out of the clock on time and you're old enough that you just want to be done with it, or just a different phase of your life, whatever it is, you're going to reach an end at some point. So if we take that MA world, the mergers and acquisitions, anytime you start talking with the investors or the buyers, future buyers, are they more concerned about the mindset of the company or the strategy of the company? Right. I've got one guy that uh he put it this way. He says, I walk in, and this is a guy who's done a probably, what did he say? Last time I talked to him, I wanna say it was like 120-something MA events, right? So very well versed in that world. And he says, I've I've done this enough times. He says, the first thing I walk in to where to where I'm not wasting my time, he says, I come in and I ask a question to the owner, to the founder, whoever that individual is. He says, if I took you and stuck you on a cellboat in the middle of the ocean without uh internet connection, who's going to make the choices in this company for the next six months? And he says, if I get the hesitation, um, oz, I don't know, it's not very clear, he says, I'm done. He says, I don't even participate anymore. He is he's done enough deals that he's gotten to that point, that's his question for determining whether or not this is worth it. And so when I hear uh testimonials and experiences like that, I think, huh? Well, shouldn't we all as entrepreneurs be in a situation where we could, you know, hypothetically get on that sailboat without connection and someone's here to be able to run that business and make decisions, that they're empowered to do so? And we all know the answer of that, right? But once we start understanding that, the hard part is actually now how do we build that? It's one thing to say it, it's one thing to talk about it, but it's a completely different to actually start building a revenue culture where people are empowered to work and to talk revenue. So many times I visit with these business owners, and well, I I I don't let so-and-so know this, I don't let so-and-so know this, I don't let so-and-so know this. Okay, well, I get it. Having been there, I I get it. Maybe we don't talk dollars, but maybe it's a different conversation with just a different metric that then extrapolates into dollars. And so being able to develop a company that actually one looks for patterns, because if if you can't find the patterns, you remember the old uh Wizard of Oz movie, right? Uh Dorothy and whatnot at the and and she goes into the Wizard of Oz. I think it's the second time, and the curtain is kind of partial partially pulled back, and there's this old guy back up there, and he's pulling all of these levers, and nothing's working. The head is broken, you know, all this stuff, and he just nothing's working. We can be like that. We can just be tugging on all these different levers. Try this, try this, do this, do this. Maybe this works, maybe that. I don't know. But at some point in time, if you really want to operate the head, you're gonna have to start labeling and identifying what those levers are, exactly what they're for, and what is the impact it's gonna have. If I pull the lever a little bit, it's gonna articulate the head this much. And if I push it a long way, it's gonna articulate it, but you're gonna have to start identifying and qualifying these things. And that's why I uh I realized I saw that void in businesses in general, to where there's so much struggle. My grandfather was an entrepreneur, my father wasn't a serial entrepreneur. I've got eight uncles that are all serial entrepreneurs. I mean, I've been around entrepreneurship my entire life. And there's always these certain struggles that just continue to happen over and over, despite how successful or non-successful they've been. But it always revolves around a pattern. So being able to articulate and quantify those patterns empowers you to just to take what you might learn in three years, let's execute it in six months.

SPEAKER_00

What's the difference between a leader and a manager?

SPEAKER_03

The difference between a leader and a manager. I love the phrase, you can't push a rope. Right. The leader that allows himself to pull, come this way, not put, not push, right? Come this way. Let me show you. That's that's a leader. The person that says, let me let me show you this way of doing things, let me increase your education, increase your skill, increase your awareness, your mindset, help you gain more control of it. Whatever it is, they're showing you that there's something more. Managers, yes, they have that skill, they have that ability, but if we're drawing a line between leader and manager, a manager, I'd say would be more like a babysitter, someone that is uh making sure that the kid doesn't get into the cupboard that he's not supposed to get into or into the knife drawer that they're not supposed to get into. So it's a it's a different mindset, I think. It shouldn't be, but most often it is. The manager manager is trying to control and put these guardrails around these people as to what they can and can't do. Where a leader is saying, hey, there's opportunity here, there's growth here. How can we expand? How can and and and there's a there's a different feeling. Right? There's just a completely different feeling that you get when you're being led to something versus when you're being managed or controlled. And naturally, most people respond better to leaders. There are certain people that just want to be controlled in their little box, but most people that have a little bit of entrepreneurialism in them, you know, a little bit of, hey, I want to go and conquer the world, I want to do something cool, uh new. There's that spirit, there's that fire, and and leaders kindle it. Leaders kindle it. They they they show new stuff, they they bring you just a different world that you're kind of unaware of. And so to me, that's a difference between managers and leaders.

SPEAKER_00

And what should an entrepreneur be? A manager or a leader?

SPEAKER_03

An entrepreneur, in my mind, should be much more a leader than a manager, based on the definitions that we've given. Um, that is again, if he's a manager, going back to my friend's question about the MA, the MA folk are going to walk out the door.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_03

If he's a manager, they're going to turn and walk. If he's a leader and he's led his people or her people to the point that they can do certain things, that they're in a certain pasture that they can perform and and and occupy and uh receive and do and conduct if he's or she has led them there, then that's that's where value is found in my mind.

SPEAKER_00

I've had discussions, very difficult discussions with managers in my organization who thought that they were leaders. You know, yeah, and it, you know, a little ego comes in there, Ryan, and it's a tough discussion. They're both still very important. I don't want to say that you know, managers are very, very important for we need them, but leaders are just different, and they have to be able to lead. It's a tough discussion. Have you ever had to do that?

SPEAKER_03

I have had to do that. I've had taste of it going back early in my career. Um, one of the most uh and and if you've ever had to taste the aspect of being managed, usually it's sour, right? I I would describe it as sour. And I I remember one time I was working again for an EPCM company and we were doing stuff, and I was actually the uh capital cost estimator. Um, the the one that they had again. I I came on to work and the the first day of work, uh the owner let me know that their chief capital cost estimator had just turned in his resignation and he'd be leaving at the end of the week. And he looked at my resume and he says, Do you think you could do this? I said, Well, I've never done it. Sure, why not? You know, so I hop on and I'm doing this. And um, we had a project uh very specific. It was it was about a 250, 260 million dollar project. And we were drafting up the scoping and the you know pre-feasibility and the feasibility studies for it. And I was in charge of the uh CCE, the capital cost estimating. And as I'm doing this, the individual on the client side, right? He was an older gentleman, and he he and not that that's bad. I I actually love it. I mean, he just reminded me kind of my grandpa, and you know, those guys, they wake up at four o'clock in the morning and they're already going. You you know how that is, right? And I kid you not. I mean, once once I got assigned to him, he got my cell phone and I literally got phone calls at 4 30 in the morning. Wow, you know, and and he was an hour ahead of me. So it was made it even worse, right? And and so uh we spent we spent probably about, I don't know, maybe six, seven months, eight months on this particular project. And so when I found out that that was his rhythm, right? That's how he's doing, then I said, hey, I'll just modify my schedule. I'll just come into work early because that's what he wants, right? He wants to be able to go through these and this numbers and that kind of stuff. So I just modified my schedule and I'd come into work at 4:30, five o'clock in the morning, and we'd have these early conversations, and he was happy because he was getting his stuff done before he had to answer to his board and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there was one gentleman within our company. Um, I'll just call him Mark. And I'm sitting there, we're we're probably, again, five months into this project. And he calls me in and he brings the owner in, and we're in the little conference room, and he says, it's come to my attention that uh you may have been putting different hours on your time card than what you actually work because he would see me like this this guy is a rigid nine to fiver, like just rigid, right? You know, no if, ends, or buts about it. So he'd he'd see me leave at you know two, three o'clock in the afternoon, but had no clue that I was there at 4 a.m. And so this happened, and he and he says, here's a copy of your time card, and he hands me a red pin. And the owner's right there, hands me the red pin on top. He says, I want you to go through and correct all the hours on your timesheet and then sign it at the bottom so that we can document this. And I'm looking at him. I look over at the owner, and I grab that, I don't even look at the timesheet. I grab the pen, I sign nice and big over it, and I just slide it back his way. I wasn't with that company three weeks later. Why? Because not because they weren't good or per se, it's because at that point I realized that I was being quote, managed. They didn't even bother to ask the question. Now, again, three weeks later, when I turned in my two weeks resignation, the owner comes straight to me. I'll give you a $20,000 raise. We'll we will make sure that Mark is not your manager anymore. We'll do this. What do we got to do to keep you? And I'm like, I'm sorry, it's too late. Like you should have thought about that beforehand. If you don't trust me enough with this, are you ever going to trust me with the other stuff? I'm one of the youngest ones around here. I got a long way to go. I, you know, I and so the moment you start managing people, you run the risk of quenching the fire, especially in younger people. Right? The younger people that have they just got that itch, right? They may not know as much as the older people, but they got a fire. They get that they they want to solve problems, they want to figure it out, they want to dive into it.

unknown

Feed it.

SPEAKER_03

Love it, feed it, you know, get in there, find those guys, because those are going to be those those diamonds. And so leaders will see that, they'll recognize that. Managers will try and corral and control, and and and usually that's a uh a point of strife in in virtually any business.

SPEAKER_00

Ryan, is there something you believed in firmly, strongly 10 years ago that you no longer believe now?

SPEAKER_03

I would say the use of certain tools, i.e. the AI world right now, uh, me personally, the previous me, the the mechanical engineer business, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. As I started seeing some of this AI stuff come about, right? Because I I I I've lived my whole career without it. I I've accomplished all these things. Yeah, you know, I've accomplished all these things without it. You know, why is all of a sudden this gonna make it different, right? And so erroneously, I have said, eh, it's just a thing, it's going to apply to a few techies, you know, that kind of stuff. It's not my mojo, whatever it is that was going on in my head. I realized here recently, specifically, just within the last half a year, how wrong I have been about that. And I am actually, like I said, like I mentioned earlier, we just recently, about three months ago, end of December, uh, launched the dashboard uh own your revenue dashboard app. And as I'm launching this, and you got the beta version up, we've got the first companies into it, and I'm starting to see to lead myself to a vision that I six months ago I didn't have, frankly. And as I'm doing this and I'm getting coached on additional things, i.e., the skill of AI. Right? I I'm not a programmer, I don't pretend to be one at all, but I can uh I hope I'm not that old dog that can't learn new tricks. And so I'm coming in and I've hired certain people. Yes, they're much younger than me, but they know this stuff. Certain guys that I can trust that can teach me, and all of a sudden, well, I can do this now, and I can do that now, I can do this now. I I just had a post actually this morning about it. I took, I started a couple years ago with um with a recording uh uh Fathom, you know, one of the tools that just uh records your your your Zoom meetings and then it provides you a little you know Zoom uh transcript from it. And okay, I signed up for it and it just logs in and it does its thing. And I knew it was there, but I've never really done anything with it. And now I've got almost 600 of those, 600 meetings where I've sat down and talked with clients and customers and potentials and you know, just all the different meetings that I've had. And I took all 600 of those transcripts and I stuck them in, quote, my brain. So I ironically, I call it Rybot. My name is Ryan R-I-O-N, and I just call it Rybot. So I stuck it in, I stuck it into the Rybot, and I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I've got my dashboard where people are going to be doing work, and everybody's familiar with this FAQ thing, which, hey, if I got a question, I'm gonna go to the standard template and it's gonna give me an FAQ. I I think there's a better way to do this. This is what's been going through my mind here just these last few weeks. And I think I can put Rybot into my app so that when people have questions, they actually get me kind of. And they get the stories, they get the answers, they get uh kind of a real-time feed. So now I've got almost 600 of these transcripts now in the bot, and I'm tinkering, I'm doing this right now. I'm tinkering with it and saying, okay, how do I what would you say this? And I'm just asking it random questions. I'm thinking, dang, that was a good answer. I'd like, I'd like to meet this ribot, you know. You're looking around. And so the ability for us to do things like that is just awesome. And I believe that in order for us to be able to serve people better, we've got to be able to tap into it, especially us that have, like we mentioned, we've done all the work with. Without it. Okay, well, how do we do this next phase of work? Right? However long that is, 5, 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it is we got left in our runway. Um, you know, how do we die with our boots on, so to speak, right? So we've got to be able to take advantage of those things. But if we don't know how, then that's going to be very, very difficult. If we're always just, oh, I'm gonna leave it up to the third party this or third party that, they can handle it for me. Your business deserves more, your people deserve more, your service deserves more, your future, your legacy deserves more, then just kind of ignoring that. And so, anyways, that's actually one of the pieces that I am actually integrating into my own your revenue is okay, as we find these patterns that maybe you like me have neglected it. Well, let's solve the problem, let's turn around and start incorporating it, start answering it.

SPEAKER_00

So, Ryan, I started my business back in the 90s and I was working way too hard. And uh, you know, like you mentioned 72 hours that one person worked, right? 14, 16 hour days. You know, you've been there before and putting my personal well-being in the backseat. I slowed down my exercise, you know, started developing poor eating habits. And next thing I know, I'm in front of the doctor, and she tells me I'm at 340 pounds. So I had gained all this, yeah, I had gained all this terrible amount of weight. I knew I was getting big, didn't think I was that big. But she then tells me, if you don't lose this weight, you're not gonna see your daughter graduate. So I I'm driving home and I'm angered, right? I'm not motivated, I'm angry at myself. You know, I I this is my pie hole. I did this. These decisions I make just don't affect me anymore. I'm not a kid anymore. I've got this family now, it's much bigger. So um I spend the next six, seven months, lost about 120 pounds and 130 pounds, kept it off. You know, you can't look at these things as finishing lines, right? These are lifelong changes. So when I tell people this story, Ryan, I always get the same question what's your secret? What you doing? There's no secret. I just say discipline, right? Focus, willpower, you know, routine. How does discipline play a role in your life? I know you compare it to being distracted, but discipline itself, what role does it play?

SPEAKER_03

The role that discipline plays in my life is definitely founded in routines. As mentioned, I've got four kids. And you're probably familiar with there's a book out there, it's the number one success book. It's called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, right? And Napoleon did a whole study on the the wonders, the you know, the uh uh the Fords and the Rockefellers and all those back then. And he talks about that. Now, fast forward, there's a gentleman by the name of John Mitchell. John Mitchell is currently at the University of Texas, and he wrote a book called The Missing Secret. And John talks about his work and his business and how he went through Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and he was looking for the secret, and he couldn't quite find it in the book, even though the hidden message is that there is a secret to being disciplined and making the right choices regularly, because ultimately, whether it's business, whether it's your personal health, whatever it is, it's all about the choices, right? Do you choose to eat the the healthy good thing or the non-healthy bad thing? Do you choose to work out or not work out? We all know these things. We we know the basics, it's not it's not revelation to us, but John goes in there and and and he he mentions something very clearly. He says, 95% of your decisions are made by your subconscious. And as he studies this, you know, 95%, and and he wrote again that book, The Missing Secret, and he has a program called Think It Be It. And he teaches this to the coaches, he teaches it to athletes, he teaches it to entrepreneurs, where 95%, let's just let's just take that into account. If 95% of our actions are made or decided through our subconscious, I mean, that's a huge piece, right? I mean, if you just think about all your muscles, if you were to think that 95% of your mobility came from one muscle, what would you do to that muscle? You'd you'd stretch it, you'd work it, you'd take care of it, you'd ice it, you'd, you know, you'd do all the things because it's 95% of your mobility. So you'd take care of that muscle. Similarly, we don't know how to actually train our subconscious. It's not something that we just wake up knowing how to do. We have to be taught this. The thing about that I've learned is our subconscious, some people can kind of refer to it, hey, it's your habit, right? Well, we all know that habits can be learned in what about 21 days? I mean, whatever the number is, 23 days, what our subconscious is extremely trusting. And what do I mean by that? If I look up into the sky and I tell myself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that it's purple, eventually I'm probably going to believe that the sky is purple. Because I've told myself that so many times. Similarly, training our subconscious to do certain things. I mean, if you really go back and just start kind of thinking about your morning, you put on your pants, you brushed your teeth, you ate your food, you took your shower, you did your workout. Most of that you did while your conscious brain was thinking something else. You did most of your work, yes, with your subconscious. So let's train it. And so his whole program, I love it. You can get his book and you can actually download it. But there he calls it the 12-minute routine, where you've written certain things out and you read it to yourself every morning when you get out of bed to train your subconscious so that subconsciously you're thinking things. And I thought, I'll go a little bit more personal here. I thought, hey, well, that sounds, it makes logical sense to me as I'm reading through the book. It makes logical sense to me. So anything that makes logical sense, I'm willing to give a give a go, right? So I gave it a go, and I kid you not, two weeks into it, I started recognizing change in myself. Just the way that I thought about things, the way that I approached people, the way that I approached relationships, the way that I was just naturally more focused, and I just felt naturally more disciplined and less distracted. Like this was happening almost automatically, because I was tapping into my subconscious and I couldn't get enough of it. I said, honey, you need to try this. And so I got my wife on. She started doing it. And then when she started seeing the success, I said, okay, uh, grab my kids, grab my uh one of my kids here. Well, one of my oldest is in Brazil, but my second is still here in high school. Grabbed her, and she's a state athlete, and so started having her do it. And all of a sudden, her focus started changing, and she's like, dang, dad, this is so. My point in bringing this up if it's having an effect on me, it's having an effect on my wife, it's having an effect on my high school daughter, there's validity here. So being able to actually train your subconscious and working to do that, and and John Mitchell, he'll even go on and say, even if you know about it, there's only about two percent of the population that actually try and do this. He said everybody else will just kind of fluff it off. Maybe try it a little bit, but they they won't really stay in it. And so one of your questions was how do I stay disciplined? Um of the things I do for myself, this is me personally, right? I I try and find a big question, something that's leading me to something I don't know, to just lead me to discovery, right? It's something out there. I think of it like as uh the Americas was to Columbus. I want to excuse me, I want to find that thing that's gonna just lead me out there. I don't know where I'm going. There's a lot of open ocean here. I don't know how long I'm gonna get like I know it's out here. I'm I'm just gonna go find it. And I have found these last couple of years as I ask myself big questions as I look for bigger questions within my own relationship, my own, you know, some of it's spiritual, some of it's work-related, some of its relationships, depending on the bigger the question, the bigger the pull that I that I feel toward that. And that that pull is what helps me to answer your question. That pull is what helps me stay disciplined in doing those things, like training my subconscious and sticking with programs and keeping my health and everything in check. Whatever, whatever it is, those bigger questions really help pull me to stay disciplined in doing those things.

SPEAKER_00

What motivates you, Ryan?

SPEAKER_03

Motivation changes. I've seen that over my life where I've been motivated for different reasons. And right now, what is largely motivating me, one, is a heavy desire to serve. If you look at the statistics around businesses and entrepreneurs, 96% fell within five years. 96%. If you knew 100 entrepreneurs, only four are actually going to be around in a few years. And that's one of my big questions is to why. Why is that now? I will say there's some businesses that got started that probably should have never been started, but there's a number of those, and that maybe they just didn't have the right coaching, they just didn't have the right tools at the right timing. So if we can help solve some of those problems, if we can turn five percent into five four percent into five percent that stick around, hey. You know, it's kind of like the starfish, right? Starfish on the beach and the boy just throwing them back. You know, what difference are you gonna make? Well, I made it a I made a difference to that starfish. That one, yeah. Right. And so so that's that's what that's what's motivating me largely right now from from the business perspective.

SPEAKER_00

So I hear you serve, and I also you didn't say it, but impact, I would think, from that. So given that motivation, how do you measure success?

SPEAKER_03

How do I measure success?

SPEAKER_00

Given that motivation of impact serving.

SPEAKER_03

I would measure the success based on the temperature, the feeling that is being given. I can have these testimonial moments. And then this is another beautiful part I actually was just working on this morning. I told the told my Rybot to go back to all of my transcripts and I said, Hey, pull testimonials where people thanked me for this or you know, they were happy for this. It's actually really cool. So, I mean, again, using that tool, but I would gauge it based on that. The comments from people when they just tell me, like, crap, I've never thought of this. I've never seen it that way. Uh, two weeks ago, I had one lady, she just she was looking at some of the numbers after we were looking at patterns. Her comment was, that hurts my soul. You know, she was she was seeing things that was being omitted, right, within the company, you know, and for her realm, for her office realm, it accounted for about $840,000 a year. And she just really crap, that hurts my soul. Well, of course it does. Great, wonderful. That's now giving us permission to change. So I rate success based on the temperature of those feelings, those people that are providing the commentary back. If they're feeling more confident, if they're feeling more empowered, more clear, less jumbled, whatever those types of feelings are that they're getting simply because we're having a conversation and I just happen to have a a product and a little micro SAS that helps them, then you know, great, wonderful. That's that's how I tend to gauge uh gauge that success. It's kind of like I I've done youth. Uh I've coached youth sports for over 20 years. And every now and then I'll get this letter from a young man that is now uh a young father, middle father, and they just they're reminiscing about something that I did I've long since forgotten, but it's clear that it had an impact on their life. And so to me, that's how I that's how I gauge my quote quote success.

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_03

The best way to get in touch with me, just write on the website. You'll have it on there, 537BD. Um, we're actually getting ready to launch some free trial stuff within our dashboard for people. Uh, but it's all right there. They can click the link. Uh, there's going to be those login credentials and things like that that they can get. Um, but it's my calendar is right there. The easiest thing to do is hey, uh just just pick a time. Let's have a chat. You know, it's kind of like the kitchen. If you're hungry, you've got to go into the kitchen. So if you want to see how this will work, if you want to experience what is possible in the next six, 12 months, you got to go into the kitchen, meaning you got to go online and just pick the time. It's not hard, it's really simple. And and that's that's the best way.

SPEAKER_00

537bd.com. We'll make sure to put it there. Ryan, next time I'm in the uh greater DFW area, perhaps we'll get together and have a cup of tea.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much. You'll be well.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks, Joey.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for listening andor viewing Joey Pins Discipline Conversations. Please share this episode with one or two of your friends who you think may benefit from the episode. Our website, www.joepins.com. There you find lots of resources, and you can join our mailing list. Please follow us on all our social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Podcast information, the video version of our podcast is on YouTube. Please subscribe. Audio is on all major podcasting platforms. Please follow them. And if you like it, please consider giving five star rating. Would really appreciate that. Thank you again for listening or watching Joey Pin's Discipline Conversations.